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Tuesday, October 29, 2013

A 42 year old man, in otherwise good health, has died at a local Bombay hospital due to what medical experts agree was an overdose of reading "Sachin Tendulkar tributes"

The man, like 150% of all Indians, was a cricket fan and a one time admirer of Sachin Tendulkar.

Very little is known of this condition, but some experts have suggested that in certain rare conditions, men lack the immunity and are unable, to withstand the stress resulting from reading saccharine sweet articles of tribute about celebrities they have lost respect for. In such men, their sugar levels rise to amounts that can lead to stroke, temporary blindness and in some cases result in death.

Health authorities fear that there will be an epidemic of sorts with the country preparing itself for life after Sachin Tendulkar's retirement by publishing article after article on Sachin Tendulkar's greatness. Research suggests most of the youngsters under 35 and older generation 50 and above are so far immune to this condition.

It is the 35 to 50 years olds who have been subjected to decades of Sachin worship that are most at risk. Regular exercise, a healthy diet, developing a liking for team sports, and limiting visits to cricket related sites are recommended by most doctors to dodge this condition.

The man who died, doctors say after extensive interviews with family members, first began to show signs of weakened immunity to Sachin praise around 2004.

"Around the time Sachin scored a double hundred in Sydney without a single cover drive, my husband started getting irritated every time someone unconditionally praised Sachin", said his wife. "It was the death of Sachin as an attacking batman, he would say" she added

His son said, "Before 2004, I loved my dad. All it took for him to be happy was that Sachin put up a good fight. After the Sydney 2004, something died in him. My dad was never the same man again"

One of his friends even recollected an incident at a pub where after reading a routine article on Sachin Tendulkar's greatness on his friends mobile phone, the now deceased man, complained of blindness. Sachin had just skipped the West Indies tour for the IPL and we now know that the lowered immunity led to a sudden increase of blood sugar levels that temporarily blinded the man.

Doctors suggest that the best way to handle symptoms of this disease is to sit the patient down and indulge in some realistic assessment of Sachin Tendulkar's career. Sadly there are very few people who can do that so its best, doctors add, to let the patient die.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

One of the most exciting administrative tussles between 2 cricket boards; one time close friends; has come to a pulsating end.

The result?

A 2 Test and 3 ODI series when India tour South Africa in December 2013 and a 100% guarantee that Sachin will retire.

BCCI wins!!

Highlights of the win

Sachin Tendulkar's 200th Test will be played in India with a guarantee that he will not pile on any more misery on us after that.

Haroon Lorgat will be sent on a long leave of absence. Heads of boards the world over now know precisely what their boundaries are if they want to keep their jobs.

Whether it was because of the need for obscenities as a once great batsman prepares for life after cricket, or it was because Mr. Haroon Lorgat said or did something that the BCCI did not approve of, who knows. My guess is Sachin and his retirement was just an excuse for the petty BCCI administrators to get back at CSA for disregarding their diktat over Mr. Lorgat .

Part of me says that, if it took this maneuvering to get Sachin to retire, its worth the trouble. One thing Sachin has inadvertently ended up doing, is make the life of his successor and selectors who pick that successor that much easier. One can throw darts and pic anyone who has played a bit a first class cricket in India and not go wrong. Averaging 20 odd and the ability to slow the run rate down to a trickle, is hard not to achieve. Even Maninder Singh can do it, without taking up any time batting at the nets. Plus we will be spared the tamasha of making a routine bowled appear that the ball stayed low.

A much anticipated Test series between 2 good Test sides is now reduced to a 2 Tester.

The official line given is some misdeeds by Haroon Lorgat who will be sent on a long leave for the series to go ahead.

I wonder sometimes. Why does the BCCI even bother to cook up some excuses to do what they want to do anyways.

For example if the BCCI wants to scrap the English tour of 2014 and extend the IPL by 10 weeks. What, who and why would anyone stop them? Is there any board, court, sponsor, government or people who can do anything if the BCCI says..."We will not tour England in 2014...because....well just because........"

What's stopping them from doing that?

That they feel the need to cook up excuses to make their decisions sound reasonable and bound by rules and protocols, shows that the BCCI is not yet willing to be an open bully.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Do you know the greatest cricketer of all time? Well it’s
Tendulkar. He has been playing for 24 years on the Indian team. He will retire
this year though .He had a lot of accomplishments as he went through cricket.
It was an outstanding job by him to do this.

Tendulkar first got on the Indian team when he was 16 in
1989. He made his debut in Pakistan which was very hard back then. He had scored his first test century in 1990.
He currently has 51 test centuries which is the most in cricket history. He was
respected by many cricket players across the world. He had scored centuries
against 11 separate teams. Sachin has made 100 international centuries, which
is the most in cricket history. I like how he plays. He is confident and wants
to win every match.

He has played some excellent innings that I remember.

I
first started watching cricket in December of 2010 when I was 7 years old. I
was fortunate enough to see his 50th and 51st test
centuries when he made 111 not out and 146 against South Africa. He also
made 111 in the 2011 World cup against South Africa, but after Tendulkar went
India collapsed and lost.

Friday, October 11, 2013

The one thing that all of us can agree on is that there will
never be another phenomenon in our lifetime like Sachin Tendulkar. News of his
retirement came in early yesterday and frankly it didn’t really make an impact
at first. The slow motion movie started in 2011 with his labored gasp to a
hundred international tons, eventual retirement from ODIs and the IPL with it
now culminating in his retirement from tests after playing number 200. For a
man that has consistently said that 100 is just a number, this seems a little
hypocritical. But we understand that the modest little man must have bowed to
pressure from the BCCI and others to delay his announcement until he got to the
milestone. Nothing else explains the haste with which the West Indies tour was
arranged and the crisis with CSA begun.

Our cricketing lives are forever intertwined with Sachin
Tendulkar. As teenagers playing on Shivaji Park, we had the privilege and luck
to know about him early in our lives and so track his growth through schools,
domestic and international cricket for a better part of our lives. However,
having witnessed Gavaskar’s non-descript retirement from test cricket as well
as Kapil’s labored one, we had no doubt which way was the better way to go.
Tendulkar, unfortunately, succumbed to the establishment and the fans vicarious
need to turn a somber event into a spectacle. A meaningless test series that
will serve no purpose other than create a needless tamasha for the great man to bow out with a little less dignity
than would behoove his stature.

I guess that’s what we have criticized him about all these
years. Not willing to stand up and be counted. Indian cricket is reeling from
scandals and poor leadership. Unfortunately, the colossus that he is on the
field, he is a mere aam aadmi off it. The Rajya Sabha membership was
probably a well –thought out way for him to speak out without fear of a BCCI
backlash or to offer up ideas to clean up sports in general. This dream that we
have of Sachin will probably remain unfulfilled.

However, many other dreams that we dreamt were fulfilled.
Those of us who saw him early in his career feel he has underachieved. Yes,
that’s right. Underachieved! But this rancor is misplaced perhaps. It only
masks the disappointment of a generation of us who lived through regular
humiliations meted out to Indian teams by Pakistan, West Indies, Australia,
England and Sri Lanka. Throughout the nineties India really didn’t overcome
those teams with any confidence despite Tendulkar’s frequent heroics. He gave
us hope that we lacked in the decade before that.

His biggest contribution actually came in the 2000s with the
advent of the new generation of cricketers starting with Virender Sehwag. A
self-confessed emulator of Sachin Tendulkar, he epitomized the new kids who
knew no fear. Dhoni, Yuvraj, Kohli, Gambhir and now Shikar Dhawan have followed
this legion of kids who worshipped at the Tendulkar school of batsmanship.
Fearless expression of talent! Unfortunately, the master himself became
tempered and measured and a grim accumulator. Perhaps it was a response to age
and the scarring suffered by being part of losing teams in the nineties.

Dravid and Laxman may have been better test batsmen when it
counted. Ganguly may have been a better captain. Dhoni will be the most accomplished
Indian captain and ODI cricketer when he retires. Sehwag will be the only one
with two test triples for India. But the GOD of Indian cricket, the father of Indian
batting expression will always be Sachin Tendulkar. Though he himself probably
never overcame the nerves of a pressure-filled chase except on a few occasions,
it’s clear that it’s his spirit that gives Kohli the temperament in an ODI
chase. It’s his technique and discipline that fuels Cheteshwar Pujara’s desire
to excel. It’s his entertaining shot-making that propels Yuvraj Singh. It’s his
ability to stand-up to fast bowling that drove Sehwag. And it’s his wisdom that
has built an Indian cricket team today that we are proud of.

The shot that really rang out for us was THAT six of Shoaib
Akhtar in the 2003 World Cup. With that one shot, Tendulkar exorcised the ghosts
of eighties and nineties forever. Indian batsmen had now stepped out of the
stereotype of talented spinelessness. And the credit goes to one man and one
man alone. Sachin Tendulkar. It’s time for him to let his baby go. It had
already grown up when it won the 2011 World Cup. Good bye Sachin!